The problem of White Supremacy - Spinoff from Buffalo Shooting thread
guess I'll put this here
===================
............But responding to Pierce’s concerns, Cooney decided that because the show had received glowing reviews since its premiere, “we can begin to inject more ‘Watts’ as the days go by.” Having secured a large enough viewership to ensure the success of the show, Cooney now worried less about alienating White audiences.
Producers attempted to fulfill this mission in a number of ways. In season three, they invited prominent Black activists and artists to visit “Sesame Street” and speak directly about race.
Nina Simone sang “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black”; folk artist Brother Kirk performed songs about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Harriet Tubman; and the Rev. Jesse Jackson recited a rendition of the civil rights call and response poem “I Am — Somebody” with a group of children.
Perched on the brownstone stoop of “Sesame Street,” Jackson called out to the children and they responded in kind: “I am Black, brown, White, I speak a different language, but I must be respected, protected, never rejected. I am God’s child. I am somebody.”
Jackson’s appearance is now regularly featured on “Sesame Street’s” social media, particularly when the show wants to promote its legacy of diversity and commitment to racial justice. But in 1972, White parents denounced the performance.
“Appalled,” “shocked,” “disappointed” and “disgusted,” White parents wrote to the workshop to express their concern about the “appropriateness of the Black Power type incidents” in this series of “Sesame Street” episodes.
“I was horrified to see you make these children chant,” one mother wrote. “I don’t care what they shout in unison, it is totalitarian & repellent!” Parents expressed concern that the children did not know what they were repeating. “The entire technique seemed very reminiscent of a Nazi rally,” one parent objected. “What was presented was indoctrination, not education.”
Parents also objected to the content. “Perhaps some welfare recipients are ‘somebody,’ ” wrote one disgruntled parent, “and perhaps some blacks have more reason to be proud of being black than American …. [but] this type of regimented indoctrination has no place in an educational TV program.”
These parents demanded a return to the show’s “subtle technique of showing people living, working, and playing together.”
And the workshop listened. Moving forward, they chose a more colorblind approach, stepping away from explicitly talking about race and featuring Black artists who encouraged the racial pride of Black viewers. Colorblindness enabled producers to continue to represent Black viewers through the racial diversity of the cast without alienating the White audiences outraged by Jackson’s version of “I Am — Somebody.” It was the safest option to sustain the largest audience possible..........